Page 101 of Body Check

My shirt, like his, is pulled up until I blink, and I see fabric, and then blink again and Jackson’s living room comes back into place. Calloused fingers stroke down the pearls of my spine in light, feathery touches. The band of my bra tightens, making it momentarily hard to breathe—and then loosens when the cups fall from my breasts. I let the undergarment fall to the floor.

Masculine lips collide with my shoulder blades. The space behind my ear that never fails to make me quiver. Down they travel, covering the expanse of my back until Jackson pauses and I hear him lower to his knees.

“Grip the table, sweetheart.”

My tongue feels swollen as I move into place, fingers finding the lip of the entryway table that’s waist-high. When I feel Jackson at my back, kissing the base of my spine, there’s no more hope of ever catching my breath. Particularly not when my skirt is inched down my legs, my boy shorts right along with it.

Jackson’s palms cradle my butt, his thumbs pressing inward in small circles. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you—other than being caught with the same truck as Cornell’s goalie, that is.”

It’s not what I expected him to say, and laugher spills from my lips. Twisting at my waist, I peer down at him behind me. Reach forward and cup his face, and murmur, “Don’t worry, yours is the only car I’ve ever vandalized.”

“Better be,” he grunts with male satisfaction. His hands graze my skin as he hooks them around my outer thighs. “I knew right then that no one would ever make me feel the way you do.”

Breath catching when he inches my legs apart, I manage an uneven, “And how is that?”

“Like I’m home.” His brown eyes zero in on my face, rooting me in place with the intensity that I see in them. “You walked into my life fourteen years ago, Holls, and you turned the whole damn thing upside down. And when things came tumbling, I had no idea how to stop it from shattering altogether. I let you down, sweetheart, and for that, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Jackson, you can’t—”

He kisses the back of one thigh, shutting me up. “Let me get this out.”

My core clenches at the command in his voice. I can’t force myself to look away, not yet. It hasn’t escaped my notice that I’m naked—so very, very naked—while he’s mostly clothed. “Go on, then.”

His smile is fleeting but grateful. “I fucked up in letting you walk out of my life, but I think—in some weird, screwed-up way—I knew that signing on forGetting Puckedwould mean having you back in my life . . . if I could only convince you to take on the job.”

Just like that, realization hits me square in the face. “The interference,” I whisper, “this is what you meant, isn’t it, when you said that you were being selfish in asking me to take on the job with the show? You wanted to ensure that nothing about your headaches or visits with Dr. Mebowitz would make it on TV.”

Dark lashes fall closed as he drops his gaze to the floor. His shoulders rise and fall with a deep-seated sigh, and this time I turn around completely, unable to keep my back to him when we have this conversation.

Voice ragged, he manages, “Everything I’ve been feeling . . . I’ve been feelin’ it for a while. Enough that, after we divorced, I finally worked up the nerve to go to a doctor about all the migraines.”

I furrow my brows, confusion slicking through me. “But Dr. Mebowitz, he said that you never showed up? Right?”

Jackson lifts his head, his expression revealing all of the pain he’s kept locked down for so very long. “I showed up. Once.” He laughs bitterly. “Everything he told me, though, had me running and never looking back. I’d lost you, Holly, and the idea of losing hockey, too . . . God, it felt like I’d stepped into my own version of hell.” Shaking his head, he continues, “I’m stubborn, as we know, but I’m not stupid. Everything felt worse this year . . . more acute, more . . . debilitating, I guess you could say. I knew I’d have to go back at some point, and I knew that there was only one person I could ever trust to keep my secret.”

“Me.”

“You.” Holding my gaze, he says, “You, the girl I knew I’d marry within weeks of meeting her.” He gently spins me back around, one big palm landing on my lower back to apply pressure and tip my butt up into the air. My chest grazes the cool marble table. “You, the girl who gave me everything she was and loved me just right.” The heat of his arm circles my leg, and I don’t even have the chance to think about what’s happening until his middle finger is already pressing down on my clit. A moan tears from my throat.

“You,” Jackson goes on, as though he’s not driving me mad, “the girl who I lost, the girl I love. I should have told you about Dr. Mebowitz earlier than now but admitting the pain to you would make it real. Permanent in a way I desperately wish it wasn’t. And I didn’t want to change the way you look at me. I didn’t want you to see me as anyone but the man who loves you beyond reason. But I realized today . . . I can’t do this without you by my side. I need your strength when I’ve got none left. I need your love when everything feels like it’s going to hell. No one compares to you, Holly. Not for me. For me, it’s always been you.”

A cry bursts from my lungs when I feel his tongue dive between my legs, stroking along my seam. My hands turn to fists on the edge of the table as pleasure sinks into my limbs.

I arch my back and catch my gaze reflected back at me from the mirror above the table. I see nothing of Jackson from my vantage point, just the crown of his head, but I seeallof me. My hard nipples and my tight stomach. My half-closed eyes and my open mouth. When Jackson sucks on my clit, I mewl like a satisfied kitten—and my shoulders roll with me as I stretch to give Jackson better reach.

It’s erotic, watching myself as Jackson works me to abandon.

Two fingers sink into my heat, and colors blooms in my cheeks. I catch myself driving back against those fingers, against his circling tongue on my clit, and, for the first time, I see the woman Jackson must see.

A woman who loves just right; a woman who’s fiercely loyal and will always,always, give every last bit of her soul; a woman who isn’t afraid to get dirty if she believes in the cause.

Jackson may be the one on his knees, butI’mthe one feeling as though I’ve been knocked on my butt and forced to wake up and see the world for what it is, disallowing my grandmother’s revelations to dictate how I live.

“Another,” I beg Jackson shamelessly.

He must know exactly what I mean because a third finger joins the first two. It only takes two more pumps of his fingers to send me teetering over into an orgasm. I come, not looking at myself in the mirror but twisted at the waist so I can stare down at the man between my legs. His dark eyes snap up to mine, and maybe it’s that instant connection that does it, but the subsiding orgasm rocks into another one. My legs tremble under my weight, my inner walls locking tight on his fingers.

“Hell,” he grunts, his breath hot on my swollen clit, “you’re so damn gorgeous.”

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